Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Macro Flowers with Water Drops

Since my husband isn't too big on mowing the lawn, I decided to have a little fun with the dandelions that are growing in our yard. I photographed them using my Canon 500D closeup filter attached to my 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens. I really like using the 500D and usually carry it around in my backpack just in case I run into a good subject for macro photography. By the way, these closeup filters can be used on both Canon and Nikon lenses.

I especially love when I can create some bokeh in my photographs. The dandelion seedlings pictured above were backlit with some out-of-focus water drops creating the colorful circular pattern. The word "bokeh" comes from the Japanese language and means "blur" or "haze". If you want the points of light in your background or foreground to have that pleasing bokeh blur, be sure to set your lens to its largest aperture, such as f/2.8. On the 100-400mm lens my largest aperture is 4.5 to 5.6 (depending on how far my lens is extended) so I went with that.

I liked how the pastel hues came out in some of the water drops in the above dandelion photograph. For these images I was going for more of an artistic effect rather than razor-sharp details, so I even blurred some areas of the images in Photoshop.

In the picture below, shooting with the sun at a sharp angle created interesting and colorful streaks of light that reminded me of fireworks.

I really like the idea of photographing things right in my own backyard and I've always been fascinated by dandelions, not to mention flowers with water droplets. So I'm not going to get on my husband's case about cutting the grass anymore. Maybe we'll start a dandelion farm. I hear dandelion greens are good for you!

Peggy these are glorious!!!! I have a vague memory of using one of the filters you described a few years back, before I got my first macro lens. The memory is "vague" because of all my near-fainting spells from holding my breath trying to set and maintain focus!!! I know how difficult these kinds of images can be to capture!!! So I am ALL admiration for these images and for your skills!!!!

Lol, I know what you mean about the near-fainting spells, Lois...it often makes me feel kind of woozy with the focus going in and out when you're trying to shoot close-up. When I first started it was particularly bad but now, years later, I'm getting more used to it. Thanks for your kind words!